The global credit crunch that started off with credit default swaps and shady mortgage backed securities really brought forth into limelight the role that credit rating agencies played in the havoc that has swept every economy in every part of the world. Basically, an investor in any part of the world really looks at the rating given to a particular set of securities when deciding whether to invest in it or not. Not so much the individual investor, but huge investors like pension funds and such institutional investors look to these ratings as gospel when making investment decisions. But what if these ratings agencies themselves engage in unethical and shady practices? What does that lead the investor with?

Well, that is precisely what happened in Wall Street. The ratings agencies were under tremendous pressure to give high ratings to securities that were really not of high quality. The ratings agencies were told by their customers that if they do not give high ratings then they would lose the business and their customers would go to some other agency that would give the rating that is sought after. Sort of ratings shopping. Now that has left a lot of institutional investors with nothing but bad securities leading to significant monetary losses.

But what if the losses can be much higher than monetary in nature? What if loss to life and limb can occur by unethical practices? Well, this is exactly what can happen if materials testing laboratories end up following unethical practices. This thought came to me as our entire family was flying to attend a wedding of a family friend. We were all so happy to be together and taking a sort of a mini-vacation and as the flight attendant was busy giving us soft drinks, I looked out of the window of the airplane and a sobering thought went through my mind. I realized that I was sitting on a flying machine about thirty thousand feet above the ground whose components were deemed acceptable to fly by some materials testing lab somewhere. And I was only hoping that the tests were accurately performed to the highest metallurgical and ethical standards, without regard to business profits.

Metallurgical and materials testing labs are also businesses and are responsible for profits. But so are credit rating agencies. Look what happened when executives at credit agencies looked the other way when ratings personnel were giving high rankings for lousy securities -- people lost money. But when similar mistakes are performed by materials testing labs, people could lose their lives.

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